I’d like to show you some photos today, from a country that does not exist. This is the German colony that formed in the Okanagan Valley of British Columbia after the First […]
Only a German, Eh?
Augury
Is it possible to still read the old signs our ancestors read before they read words? Let’s look… Two mushrooms, one white, one dark, both dusted as if with snow, like the moon […]
The Illahie: the Braided Country
Here’s an old word: illahie. Here’s what it looks like to me today: Well, that’s a teeny tiny bit of it. If you look it up in a Chinook Wawa dictionary… …the […]
Return to the Snake River at the End of Time
High above the confluence of the Snake and Clearwater rivers, in the southeastern reach of my plateau homeland, the Camas Prairie catches the sky. The camas once bloomed in blue fields here. […]
Environmental Consciousness is Not Optional
Goethe, the poet, pointed out that all plants express one single energy, that opens through the life cycle of each plant as well as through the diversity of all plants. In his […]
Growing Food Without Water in the Hot Okanagan
Well, it’s dry, eh. And hot. Whew. This is 9:30 A.M. The afternoon was 38. (That’s 100 for you folks down south.) Forests are burning up. Smoke everywhere. All the upland water […]
O Canada
Today has been a day of flag-waving and celebrations of the country of Canada. This celebration is centred around this image: Canadian National Symbol A Tree That Doesn’t Grow in my Country, an […]
History and (Dis)Respect on the Clearwater River
Here’s Curtis’s 1910 photo of a Nez Perce dugout canoe. This was the low point in Nez Perce life. Over the previous century, they had lost over 90% of the territory, much of […]
The Power of Two
This is a land that divides. Or is that upon this land people divide? Here we are on the Colville Indian Reservation, looking south across the Columbia River, as it begins to flow […]
Reports of Father Pandosy Starving in 1846 Are Greatly Exaggerated
He’s the Boy from Marseilles, the French Oblate Priest who came on the Oregon Trail and started two of the first missions in Washington Territory, singing the whole time. His first was […]
Okanagan Okanogan 